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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

69 feet of sea level rise?

Climate change is a top priority for the Phillipines

Faced with worsening extreme weather and studies indicating it is likely to be highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, the government of the Philippines intends to implement a series of laws in 2013 aimed at reducing disaster risk, improving clean energy production and adapting to climate shifts.

EU will not bend on Canadian tar sand oil

Canada's urgent hunt for buyers for its oil is being thwarted as the European Commission sticks to a plan to label fuel from tar sands deposits as highly polluting, deterring refiners bound by environmental rules.

Intense pressure from Canada, seeking new markets to compensate for dwindling U.S. buying and discounted sales, has not convinced the EU executive to abandon its proposal to brand tar sands oil as more carbon-intensive than conventional crude.

Major climate changes looming

"We are poised right at the edge of some very major changes on Earth," said Anthony Barnosky, a UC Berkeley professor of biology who studies the interaction of climate change with population growth and land use. "We really are a geological force that's changing the planet."

Majority of US voters want climate action

Climate change is only polarizing on Capitol Hill.

A new report from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication finds that the majority of voters are concerned about global warming and want their elected leaders to take action.

Stern got it wrong on climate change

Lord Stern, author of the government-commissioned review on climate change that became the reference work for politicians and green campaigners, now says he underestimated the risks, and should have been more "blunt" about the threat posed to the economy by rising temperatures.

Steven Chu chastises climate change deniers

In a wide-ranging and sometimes defiant letter to staff announcing his resignation on Friday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, while highlighting his agency's achievements over the last four years, blasted critics of the administration's investment in the renewable energy market, suggesting that opponents were living in the "Stone Age."

Summit explores global climate change challenges

Seychelles is flooding, Mali is parched, Kiribati is eroding and the one bright spot would seem to be the fact that the United States president finally uttered the words "climate change."

Nations on the front lines of climate change expressed hesitant optimism for the U.S., as delegates gathered for The Energy and Resources Institute's 13th annual Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, whose goal is to tackle resource efficiency challenges.

Your biggest carbon sin

For many people reading this, air travel is their most serious environmental sin. One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or to San Francisco creates about 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person. The average American generates about 19 tons of carbon dioxide a year; the average European, 10.

Comments

Are we seeing a paradigm shift. I doubt it but live in hope. Why don't we simply adopt Jim Hansen's Tax and Dividend solution. If the US of A did this, the dynamics are such that other countries would have to follow suit. Besides, from a politician's point of view it is a tremendous vote catcher. Win win all around.

In this article, Porter provides a frank assessment of the propsects for enacting a national tax on carbon in the US anytime soon. Right now, it doesn't appear to be on any elected offical's radar screen -- including President Obama's.

What President Obama says about climate change in his upcoming State of the State address will tell us more about what he intends to do - at least in the near term.

Re "69 feet of sea level rise" article where Chris Mooney interviews Jason Box, the author of this claim. Such claim needs to be adequately qualified: Chris did not do it in this areticle. A substantial melt of both GIS and AIS is required of 69ft SLR. We can be almost sure that such event won't happen in this century and maybe even won't happen in the next century.

NEEM2013 on RealClimate provides the empirical evidence that IS response to the warming is a slow process that may last milenia. Jason apparently disagrees with the results of this study. Certainly, the orbital variation forcing in eemain was different that today's CO2 global forcing, however given the relative slowness of IS melt as evidenced in NEEM2013, I think there is plenty of time to reverse current CO2 forcing (by ocean sequestration or maybe by ingenious humans who invent the industrial scale CO2 scraping from the air) before Jason's alarming prediction has the chance to eventuate.

I'm expecting some discussions on that subject to follow and I'm looking forward...

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